KEY POINTS:
Rachael Dacy is more than the pretty face of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in Auckland.
The 30-year-old Australian athlete has the mammoth task of rallying a divided region behind the Cup and making sure it is geared to hosting a successful tournament.
As Auckland City Council's group manager of city events, and chairwoman of the Auckland Regional Steering Group, she must not only ensure the infrastructure for the event works but also extract maximum economic benefit for her employer and the region. She has the personality and experience to pull it off.
Athletically, Dacy is a star performer, having represented Australia in pole-vaulting at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, and more recently in triathlon.
But her real strength - and the reason Auckland City Council headhunted her - is her ability to make international sporting events work without unduly disrupting the lives of ordinary citizens.
As programme manager for last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games, employed by Melbourne City Council, Dacy had the huge job of working with civic and sports authorities to make sure that Melbourne did not grind to a halt. The verdict of many athletes and administrators - and a large section of the public - was that the Melbourne Games were the best organised and most efficient in Commonwealth Games history.
As an Australian with no past association with Auckland, Dacy is confident she has the skills to make Rugby World Cup 2011 in Auckland a raging success. Auckland City Council shares her confidence and her brief covers not just the Rugby World Cup but the dozens of other international and special events in Auckland City (see sidebar).
She heads a four-person team which draws on council resources, but she will be involved in the major decisions such as the role of public transport in getting people to events, the hosting of teams, the state of the central business district and the waterfront and other attractions aimed at making visitors feel welcome.
The timing could not be better. The agreement over the upgrading and funding of Eden Park, which followed heated debate last year over whether Auckland should have a purpose-built waterfront stadium, is in place and, for the first time, Eden Park's vocal residents seem happy with the plans.
"There is a real desire to stage a successful event [from] which the Auckland region will gain the maximum benefit," says Dacy. "We will show that Auckland has a can-do attitude for major events."
She is not restricting her role to strategy. On June 2 she took the train from Britomart to Kingsland to watch the All Blacks wallop the French at Eden Park. "I was pleasantly surprised by the transport."
She followed this experience by walking from the city to Eden Park to watch the Wallabies-All Blacks match on July 21 (accompanied by her boyfriend wearing a Wallabies shirt) to underscore the value of walking to major events.
"I love the atmosphere at Eden Park. I know it is in a residential area but that somehow adds to it. The walk is actually part of the experience."
Although Auckland City Council pays her wages, Dacy chairs the Auckland Regional Steering Group which comprises representatives from Auckland Regional Council and the region's seven district councils.
"It is about maximising benefit for the region. [Rugby World Cup] won't be a success for Auckland City unless it is a success for the region."
Public transport will be the major beneficiary of the World Cup, as it was of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
Auckland City Council is already talking about working with its "transport partners" (Auckland Regional Transport Authority, Transit New Zealand, Ontrack and bodies like the Eden Park Trust Board) to provide better services for big-ticket events. In the short term, it means more trains and buses and better advice for those going to events. Long term, it equates to support for upgrading and electrifying the rail service and further improvements to the motorway network.
Commercial concerns about the state of Auckland's infrastructure and traffic congestion have also been taken on board by Auckland City Council. Two years ago the council set up a committee to develop plans on how best to move freight efficiently around the city - an issue the promoters of the Metro Project have also debated.
But the council's primary focus, and Dacy's, is to build on the popularity of major sporting events and plan for their success.
There is much speculation over the value of the Rugby World Cup to Auckland, but most observers believe it will be considerable - running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
An economic impact study by the Covec consultancy in 2005 found that a single Bledisloe Cup match was worth $12.8 million to the Auckland region and that an A-grade All Black Test was worth $8 million. The same survey found a Super-12 (now Super-14) match generated $1.5 million to $2 million and a one-day cricket international, $1 million to $1.5 million.
But the big money, Covec discovered, was from events that attracted foreign visitors. It estimated the two Lions games at Eden Park in 2005 generated more than $43 million for the Auckland region, or nearly a third of the income from the entire Lions tour.
